The FEELed research centre is celebrating its five-year anniversary later this month. Located at the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre, this will be a day of celebration, community and sharing, as we look back on five years of questions, collaborations and contributions to thinking more deeply, joyfully and inclusively about environment and climate on syilx lands.
Dr. Astrida Neimanis, director of the FEELed Lab explains that it a creative research lab where researchers think about our human relationships to place, Land and the more-than-human world.
“We specifically ask how these relationships can foreground our own differences, through a feminist, anticolonial, antiracist, queer, and accessibility justice lens,” she says. “Our community includes students and university researchers, but also neighbours and other community members and groups. This includes the four-legged, winged, swimming, and photosynthesizing beings that live here!”
The five-year anniversary celebration will be held on Friday, March 27 with drop-in workshops from 9am to 4pm, followed by a keynote conversation from 4-6 pm between FEELed Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Sue Reid and globally renown feminist and queer ecologies scholar Professor Catriona Sandilands (space is limited for the talk, registration is required).
Find out more about the events and register for the keynote
We talked to Dr. Neimanis about the last five years and what to expect for this celebration.
What sorts of events have you run over the last 5 years?
We usually run about 30 different research events per year. These range from film screenings, to reading groups, to “Craft-a-strophe!” crafting workshops, to student-run study sessions, to visiting scholar or artist workshops. What unites them all is a common question: how can we humans, in all of our differences, learn to be in better relationship with the environments that support us?
Why is having this space important to you and your research?
A lab in the woods is a very different vibe than an office on campus! The FEELed Lab, located in the Bellevue Creek watershed in the unique and threatened forest ecology of Woodhaven on syilx lands, gives us a living lab for thinking about environmental relations. We don’t have to imagine these relations or responsibilities in the abstract: we can practice caring for and relating to what is right here.
What do you hope people will get out of this full day of events that celebrate the 5 years?
We want to celebrate the diversity and breadth of our work here! It is the accomplishment of so many people, that could only have been done as community. We want to remind everyone that research impact comes in many forms, and “measures of success” importantly include the quality of the relationships we are building. That’s the best indicator of sustainability, in its broadest sense. And research can also be playful, restful, nourishing and fun!
